


As Long As It's You

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hell Trauma, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Touch-Starved, Touching, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: Provoked bythis Tumblr postby krakensdottir, which wouldn't leave my  head after I reblogged it. Both Heaven and Hell make simple touch into a trauma. It's the last barrier between them.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 174





	As Long As It's You

“Let’s try it again.”

It had been something a little like what the humans called a panic attack, the first time: heart racing in an irregular staccato like a marble in a jar, breath on the top half inch of his lungs. He doesn't need either to function, he could live at the bottom of the ocean if he needed to, but superficially it's a human corporation, made to react as theirs do.

“Perhaps a little – harder.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t. Over here – “

Aziraphale backs against the column at the shop’s south-west compass point, eyes closed, beckoning with both hands. There’s not a blank wall in the entire place, and it’s the next best thing.

Tadfield Manor had stayed in his head. Rented an entire room there, in fact. Crowley’s touch had been anything but gentle – for a moment, wind knocked out of him, he’d only been aware of the impact, the sharp smack of his skull on the plaster wall – but the pressure, the _containment,_ had been the most bizarrely safe sensation he’d ever felt.

Heaven -- at least since the Fall, since the War -- didn’t touch you to keep you safe _._ It touched you to remind you that you were being watched, that it could always reach you, that you didn’t belong to yourself. It smiled as it felt your skin trying to crawl away.

“ ‘kay, angel.” Crowley closes the distance between them, wraps arms half way around the polished surface of the column, trapping him tightly. Turns his cheek against the cold lacquered surface, so that his hair brushes, tickling, against the angel’s ear; squeezes, immobilizing him.

“Yes,” says Aziraphale. “Like that.”

Crowley knows about touch too. Hell has all kinds of inventive ways to touch you: blows, brands, cuts, things that sting and prickle and freeze. The day that Lucifer burned the snake sigil onto his temple, it had felt like a heated iron drilling out the space behind his eyes, and with it, every memory of Heaven contained there – filling it instead with a stifling darkness and the slow, fractal churn of burning lava. _You’re My little serpent now. Heaven spat you out; be grateful you’re worth My mark. Get up there and make some trouble._

He can feel the angel’s breath shuddering, almost sobbing, but deep in his chest, not rising to his lips.

“I’ll stop.” He begins to draw away, but Aziraphale’s hand comes up awkwardly, pulls him in by the fabric of his coat.

“No. I need this.”

After a long minute he can feel the rigid muscles softening, the constricted breathing deepen.

“I need to know you’ve _got_ me.”

It’s absurd, really, even to question that. Crowley’s always had him. Had his back in a dungeon, in a doomed church; had that guileless face burned into the dark depths of his heart, more indelibly than Lucifer’s sigil.

The angel’s body relaxes a bit more, his head drops against Crowley’s.

“I think maybe that’s enough. Just now.”

Their eyes meet awkwardly as the demon draws back; a soft, manicured hand barely feathers the side of his face. Crowley flinches. He’s never told Aziraphale about the branding.

“I – oh. I’m sorry.”

Only about being touched. How it’s always a prelude to something cursed. How kindness feels like a ploy; makes him ache when he realizes it’s not. That it’s something he needs and can’t understand.

“Come over here,” says Aziraphale. Pours him a glass of the new Beaujolais, the currency that’s stood in for cherishing him all these centuries. _Here’s heart’s-ease. Take it as my gift._

It’s something he can focus on, head back against the frowsty antimacassar, taking in the fumes of a bare sip with his serpent tongue, while the angel picks up his other hand; strokes the back of it slowly, as if it’s a frightened kitten.

“Mmm – nice, angel.”

It takes another sip of the Beaujolais, though, to disguise the sudden tightness of tears in his throat; he pretends it went the wrong way, swallows hard. Aziraphale’s not fooled.

“Should I stop?”

“No – I – go on.”

“This isn’t a race, dear.”

“Just – hurts to feel how much I want it.”

“I know, dear. We’re all starting over. Even if the rest of the world doesn’t know it.”

“ ‘S’gonna take forever.”

“Well, fortunately, that's something we have. I think it’s worth however long it takes, don’t you?”

Aziraphale lifts the hand that’s gone almost limp in his, sketches a kiss above it before setting it back on Crowley's knee. In good time.

“However long it takes,” he repeats. “Because lovers touch each other, Crowley, and I love _you.”_

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> If you like my fics please share! Kudos are kisses, shares are life, comments are candy that doesn't hurt your teeth. Bother me on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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